A team led by Dr. Flora C.I. Chang, VP for Administrative Affairs, TKU, had successfully concluded their mission in Japan and returned to Taiwan on June 1.

The Commission consisted of members from Offices of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, General Affairs, Information Processing Center, Library and Personnel. They stayed about a week in Japan.

After their visit, the consensus opinion of the team was that the 5 host universities they visited were friendly and overall, the environment was clean. They had structured their universities with a unique design. For instance, The Heisei International University is artistically inclined wherein students can enjoy a cup of coffee while chatting with their friends on their notebooks’ Internet. They feel as nice and cool as if they were sitting in the Pleasant Wind (Wei-feng) Plaza’s coffee booths in Taipei. So far so good, but “TKU’s library facilities are by no means inferior; students should know better to make good use of it.” The team members thus advised our students at home.

Dr. Flora C.I. Chang , as leader of the team, in summing up her visit, told our reporter that both Japan and Taiwan are facing the same problem: while senior citizens are getting more and more numerous, the teenagers are becoming increasingly scarce and precious because their parents’ practice of lower birth rate. So, the phenomenon now becoming common in Japan is: colleges cannot recruit enough students as planned. Their solution of the problem is to actively engage in developing college education as an ageless lifelong program. Another thing she has witnessed is the trend of converting public colleges/universities into private-owned enterprises. Some of the campuses she visited are still on the initiating status and their building style could provide the inspiration to TKU Lanyang campus in Ilang.

Of course, the main purposes of TKU’s visiting team was to learn from their administrative experiences, with which our corresponding activities might be improved, she said.

Then she switched the subject, reminiscing during her visit to Tokai University, how two TKU exchange students in Waseda University, Miss Chang Li-lun and Miss Chen Yung-wen had made such an impression on their President, that he promised forthwith to sign an exchange pact with TKU. Besides, she continued to reveal, how the President of Heisei International University, as a sculptor in his own right, has asked her permission to cast her into his new sculptured work---“What an honor! Interesting!” she said. Now the artistic work is nearing completion.

Following is a gist of feedbacks from the participating members of the visiting team:

From Ms. Hsu Ching-sheng, Student Affairs: In general, long before graduation, the Japanese students have already focused their attention on the job market fluctuations and attributes, so, as they graduate, they won’t be at a total loss to their next move. The TKU students are rather backward in this awareness.

From Miss Ma Shao-chuan, Chueh Sheng Memorial Library: The facilities and space available at the Main Library, TKU, are better than those of her compeers, but the automatic sensory lighting system which she saw at The University of Electro-Communications is the most impressive. She is hoping that students here will cultivate a good habit of “turning off the lights as one leaves.”

From Mr. Hsiao Ming-ching, Networks: Compared to Japan’s The U. of Electro-Communications, students of TKU are in heaven, because we own 203 MB whereas they only have 100MB in terms of broad band, and their service is limited to teaching only, and they don’t provide support to such far-fetched services such as game and ICQ, etc.

From Ms Chen Mei-dai, Secretary, Personnel: The administrative personnel of Japanese universities are mostly conscientious, although they only need to punch in once everyday. Besides, our hiring process seems to be more stringent compared to Japanese universities we visited, probably because they are private universities but we are, too.